Professor Leong is a distinguished genomics expert with a robust background in academia and industry. He has received several awards, including the FMD Fellowship (USA), the Institute of Biomedical Science President's Award (UK), and the Top Research Scientist Malaysia (TRSM). Formerly a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, he now holds fellowships with the Institute of Biomedical Science (FIBMS, UK), the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB, UK), the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC, UK), and the Academy of Sciences Malaysia (FASc). Professor Leong previously served as the Deputy Director of Research and professor of genomics at the International Medical University, Malaysia. He is the founder and CEO of AGTC Genomics and continues to contribute to the field as an adjunct professor and visiting fellow at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.
ABSTRACT
From Microbiome Sequencing to Clinical Insights — Towards Culture-Free Clinical Metagenomics and AMR Detection
Clinical microbiology remains highly dependent on culture and targeted assays, which may miss fastidious, unculturable, unexpected, or polymicrobial pathogens. Shotgun metagenomic sequencing offers a culture-free, hypothesis-independent approach for simultaneous detection of microorganisms and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes directly from clinical specimens.
The major challenge is transforming complex sequencing data into clinically actionable information. Integrated bioinformatics can enable quality control, taxonomic classification, microbial abundance profiling, contamination filtering, pathogen prioritisation, and AMR gene detection within a unified workflow. Incorporating specimen type and clinical context may further help distinguish clinically significant pathogens from colonisers or contaminants.
This approach represents an important step towards culture-free precision infectious disease diagnostics, with the potential to shorten diagnostic turnaround time, improve pathogen detection, guide antimicrobial selection, and strengthen AMR surveillance.
